If the adage, “if you are able to clearly define the problem, it is already half-solved” is true; then Officina Magisafi, an all-encompassing architecture and design studio based in Val Seriana (BG), will continue to stand out thanks to its highly rigorous, concrete and excellence-oriented modus operandi. The founders, designer Claudio Acquaviva and architect Debora Bordogni, supported also by their marked propensity for analysis and archiving, have been able to create a solid synergy between the workers in the area. This network, permeated with an authentic design culture, has become a functional organism that feeds on the professionalism of its elements, strong in their roots but open to contemporary challenges.
The confidence and ease in the words of Acquaviva and Bordogni were evident details. Their narratives were filled with complex and seemingly insidious projects, which became linear and docile in the process, thanks to excellent organisation and teamwork. These accounts were accompanied by an affable calmness on the part of the founders, which could only derive from an awareness of their expertise, offered with humility and kindness.
There are several places that make up and characterise Officina Magisafi. Although the quarry in the Bergamo mountains, from where the raw material for numerous projects is taken, is certainly the most evocative of the spaces used, Casa Vertova, Officina’s headquarters, is the most representative of this reality. The building, with a long history behind it, if from the outside it appears rather sober and modest, inside it reveals the action of the founders, who have shaped it down to the smallest details, making the spaces functional, welcoming and comfortable, transforming this building and making it a manifesto of their philosophy, filled with sincere respect for places and their inhabitants.
